Southern California Residences

The first year or so I was in San Pedro (where I resided most of the time I was in southern California) I roomed with a family next door to the home where Dwight Johnston had a room. Actually I believe that both houses were owned by his landlady. The place was about a mile or so up the hill from the Pacific Electric station, so it was quite convenient for transportation to and from work (there was about a mile walk at the other end from the train stop to the refinery gate).

San Pedro had a local bus service but I seldom if ever used it. Pacific Electric with its ubiquitous red cars was the public transportation “backbone” of the Los Angeles area at the time, with lines connecting LA proper with San Pedro and Long Beach and I think extending to other communities northward with which I was unfamiliar. Had it not been for Pacific Electric I don’t know what I would have dome for transportation. In fact it, like locating a place to room (in the housing-short situation due to the wartime activity in the shipyards) were aspects of living that I was completely unaware of when I left Iowa for California.

I have some indelible memories of Pacific Electric — waiting for it on a rainy night on the way to the graveyard shift, seeing an Italian eating a pomegranate (and leaving the seeds strewn around him on the floor of the train), bouncing on the alternative route it followed around instead of through the shipyards. I recall after the war what a delight it was when the trains resumed the pre-war route through the shipyard, which was better track and shorter.

My next residence was actually a small apartment I noticed for rent as I walked to the train station but I wasn’t there long. Finding linen, soap, etc. was a problem and when a room was offered to me by an elderly couple from the church I had started to attend I moved again. This was really a good arrangement for me, though it was farther from the P.E. station. The room I had had an outside entrance and the whole home was nicely furnished.

The owners were Hugo and Palma Johnson both of whom were Swedish immigrants. Hugo had been a contractor but had developed Parkinson’s disease, so when I knew him he was no longer the quick active person I was told he had been. He had built the house they were living in. In addition to providing me with a room Mrs. Johnson also gave me breakfast (once my days on shift work were past) which was a delight. She also provided other meals on Sundays (by then the work week was 6 days so I was always gone on Saturdays).

I liked Mrs. Johnson, she was surely a kindly, generous soul. Amongst other things she introduced me to persimmons, which I have liked ever since. I guess I continued to live with the Johnsons until the war was over — in fact I’m sure of it now that I come to think of it. It was while Vincent came c=for a short visit with me (he was stationed in Malibu at the time) that the first of the atom bombs was dropped in Japan and I was still at the Johnsons’ at the time.

For some reason I moved out of the Johnsons’ later that year and during the rest of the time I was in the south of California I lived either at the YMCA over in Long Beach (sharing a room with Jim Cosgrave) or at one of two residences in San Pedro. The last place I roomed at was really a congenial place — the landlady had a large house and several roomers. It was while I was there that Vivian and my aunt Laurine visited California and Vivian came down to San Pedro for an overnight visit with me.